Assessing IPS/IDS, Firewalls and Other Defenses with Penetration Testing

Security defense mechanisms ranging from network intrusion prevention and detection systems (IPS and IDS), to messaging gateways and desktop anti-virus applications are often circumvented by malware and other threats based merely on configuration problems, or insufficient application of vendor-issued product updates. And while these systems offer some onboard diagnostic capabilities, those features don’t typically address potential problems beyond the scope of uptime and performance measurement.

Using Core Impact Pro software solutions, organizations can proactively test the efficacy of their network, endpoint, web application, wireless, mobile and email defenses both to ensure that these technologies are working properly, and to aid in the process of evaluating products to determine ROI and influence future buying decisions.

Quickly and easily test IPS and IDS effectiveness

New exploits are constantly being developed to target and overcome intrusion protection and detection systems. It's therefore critical to understand how your current system may be bypassed before criminals and/or attackers do. Through automated penetration testing with Core Impact Pro, you can run safe, controlled exploits to identify weaknesses in your IPS, IDS and other network detection systems.

Configure your IPS/IDS properly for your environment

You can't successfully deploy an IPS or IDS without tuning it extensively to fit the unique aspects of your environment. By using Core Impact to test and evaluate your specific infrastructure, you gain the information needed to refine your IPS and IDS rules to ensure optimal network protection.

Run high-quality exploits with minimal security expertise

By nature, most network and host-based attacks must be sophisticated enough to bypass IPS and IDS technologies, messaging security gateways, or endpoint AV systems to deliver their payloads. Manually writing and running these types of exploits on your own is time consuming and requires advanced technical knowledge.

While open-source exploit frameworks are available to help with this process, they also demand heavy amounts of customization and hand-scripting to work in most computing environments, which is also time-consuming and requires deep levels of technical acumen.

Core Impact Pro solutions provide you with commercial-grade, easy-to-run exploits to aim at your systems, and generate detailed, yet coherent reports regarding that allow you to understand quickly how well your existing defense mechanisms are working at any given point in time.

In addition, Core Impact Pro's Traffic Masking capability enables testers to deploy exploits using advanced traffic modification techniques, such as fragmentation and encryption, which have become increasingly popular with attackers.

Ensure a return on investment from your security defenses

Defense mechanisms including AV systems, IPS and IDS, messaging security technologies and web applications firewalls can require significant investments in time and money. That’s why more organizations than ever before are turning to comprehensive security testing solutions such as Core Impact Pro to validate the efficacy of these tools, and to evaluate their return on investment, both before and after buying the products.

By safely simulating real-world threat scenarios, Core Impact Pro solutions can help prove whether your defenses are effectively detecting and preventing attacks – or help you determine if you need to begin looking for alternatives.

Justify additional security investments

With security budgets growing in size and therefore drawing greater levels of scrutiny from management, IT organizations need the capability to demonstrate that the investments they’re making are paying off to maintain and grow their future buying plans.

Core Impact security testing solutions verify your organization's overall security posture and provide detailed information about specific, tangible risks that may still exist. By illustrating to management that previous spending decisions have been made wisely, and that despite those investments there are remaining areas of risk, IT and security leaders can provide convincing proof that they are making the right buying decisions and defend future budgetary planning.